Books with author E. V. Odle

First published in 1923, The Clockwork Man is widely considered the original cyborg novel.Several thousand years from now, advanced humanoids known as the Makers will implant clockwork devices into our heads. At the cost of a certain amount of agency, these devices will permit us to move unhindered through time and space, and to live complacent, well-regulated lives. However, when one of these devices goes awry, a “clockwork man” appears accidentally in the 1920s, at a cricket match in a small English village. Comical yet mind-blowing hijinks ensue.There are rumors floating about that E. V. Odle is the science-fiction pen name of Virginia Woolf. But true or not, true fans of science fiction and early cyborg stories like Isaac Azimov's Robot series will no doubt deem this novel a great find.Excerpt:It was just as Doctor Allingham had congratulated himself upon the fact that the bowling was broken, and that he had only to hit now and save the trouble of running, just as he was scanning the boundaries with one eye and with the other following Tanner's short, crooked arm raised high above the white sheet at the back of the opposite wicket, that he noticed the strange figure. Its abrupt appearance, at first sight like a scare-crow dumped suddenly on the horizon, caused him to lessen his grip upon the bat in his hand. His mind wandered for just that fatal moment, and his vision of the on-coming bowler was swept away and its place taken by that arresting figure of a man coming over the path at the top of the hill, a man whose attitude, on closer examination, seemed extraordinarily like another man in the act of bowling.That was why its effect was so distracting. It seemed to the doctor that the figure had popped up there on purpose to imitate the action of a bowler and so baulk him. During the fraction of a second in which the ball reached him, this secondary image had blotted out everything else. But the behaviour of the figure was certainly abnormal. Its movements were violently ataxic. Its arms revolved like the sails of a windmill. Its legs shot out in all directions, enveloped in dust.

Several thousand years from now, advanced humanoids known as the Makers will implant clockwork devices into our heads. At the cost of a certain amount of agency, these devices will permit us to move unhindered through time and space, and to live complacent, well-regulated lives. However, when one of these devices goes awry, a “clockwork man” appears accidentally in the 1920s, at a cricket match in a small English village. Comical yet mind-blowing hijinks ensue.The novel opens with the farcical setup of the Clockwork Man's abrupt appearance at an early-twentieth-century afternoon cricket match in the countryside, which he ultimately joins and wrecks. The novel soon changes tone, however, and views the threat and promise of the Clockwork Man from several perspectives, including that of a middle-aged doctor who has grown settled in his opinions and middling life and shame at his own lack of originality, and a young man who strains against convention and the predicament of his youth.Along the way, the story challenges modern assumptions about efficiency, the tyranny of fast-paced life (and small-town opinion), and the value of free will.

Rumors has it that “E.V. Odle” was a pen name for Virginia Woolf. However this is not true.(1890-1942) UK editor and author; in the former capacity he was the first editor 1926-circa1935 of the British Argosy Magazine (see The Argosy). As younger brother of the UK illustrator and artist Alan Odle (1888-1948), who was the husband of Dorothy M Richardson (1873-1957), Odle came into close contact with J D Beresford, who had been instrumental in publishing the first volume of Richardson's Pilgrimage in 1915. Odle's Scientific Romance, The Clockwork Man (1923), clearly shows the influence of Beresford, an author central to that form, and may also have been published with his help. In this graceful tale, a Cyborg – in this case a man into whose body a clock-like monitor-cum-Time Machine has been inserted – comes accidentally back through time from 8000 CE to the present (see Time Travel), where in his Mysterious Stranger role he plays cricket and disturbs his auditors by describing a world in which life regulated by Machines is accepted by most, though not all. God, it is hoped, has been taking note of the new, "improved" version of humanity. All the more moving for its air of calm, The Clockwork Man is a plea to the human beings of the twentieth-century world that they not continue losing the battle against the machine. Other work by Odle includes the short fantasy "The Curse upon Isaac Knockabout" (April 1923 Gaiety), featuring a magic ring, a curse-bestowing genie and two somewhat stereotyped Jewish tailors.The suggestion that "E V Odle" was a pseudonym used by Virginia Woolf to write sf is an elaborate spoof. [JC]

Edwin Vincent Odle (1890-1942) was an editor and author who from 1926-c.1935 was the first editor of the British short story magazine, Argosy. His brother, the artist and illustrator Alan Odle, was married to avant-garde author Dorothy Richardson. Odle's scientific romance, The Clockwork Man, was first published in 1923 and shows the influence of J D Beresford, an author central to that form who may have helped with its publication, and also of H G Wells. It is the tale of a cyborg - a man into whose body a monitor/time machine has been inserted - who accidentally travels back in time from the far future to the present day, landing in the midst of a cricket match, and, as the 'mysterious stranger, ' describes a world regulated by machines

Several thousand years from now, advanced humanoids known as the Makers will implant clockwork devices into our heads. At the cost of a certain amount of agency, these devices will permit us to move unhindered through time and space, and to live complacent, well-regulated lives. However, when one of these devices goes awry, a “clockwork man” appears accidentally in the 1920s, at a cricket match in a small English village. Comical yet mind-blowing hijinks ensue.The novel opens with the farcical setup of the Clockwork Man's abrupt appearance at an early-twentieth-century afternoon cricket match in the countryside, which he ultimately joins and wrecks. The novel soon changes tone, however, and views the threat and promise of the Clockwork Man from several perspectives, including that of a middle-aged doctor who has grown settled in his opinions and middling life and shame at his own lack of originality, and a young man who strains against convention and the predicament of his youth.Along the way, the story challenges modern assumptions about efficiency, the tyranny of fast-paced life (and small-town opinion), and the value of free will.

Several thousand years from now, advanced humanoids known as the Makers will implant clockwork devices into our heads. At the cost of a certain amount of agency, these devices will permit us to move unhindered through time and space, and to live complacent, well-regulated lives. However, when one of these devices goes awry, a “clockwork man” appears accidentally in the 1920s, at a cricket match in a small English village. Comical yet mind-blowing hijinks ensue.The novel opens with the farcical setup of the Clockwork Man's abrupt appearance at an early-twentieth-century afternoon cricket match in the countryside, which he ultimately joins and wrecks. The novel soon changes tone, however, and views the threat and promise of the Clockwork Man from several perspectives, including that of a middle-aged doctor who has grown settled in his opinions and middling life and shame at his own lack of originality, and a young man who strains against convention and the predicament of his youth.Along the way, the story challenges modern assumptions about efficiency, the tyranny of fast-paced life (and small-town opinion), and the value of free will.